For the past 20 years, platform businesses that match, connect, and enable transactions among buyers and sellers have been growing at a tremendous rate. These businesses continue to disrupt traditional businesses in almost every sector and redefine the rules of success. In Platform Strategy, Laure Claire Reillier and Benoit Reillier define the unique characteristics of these emerging businesses, how they operate, and how platform business leaders and traditional business leaders alike can harness their power to develop and scale innovative business models. Through this comprehensive guide, the authors offer solutions to address some of the unique challenges that platform businesses face as they ignite and scale platforms to critical mass and find success in this new way of doing business.

Platform businesses serve multisided markets. While these businesses evolve and change over time, they remain focused on five key activities:

Attracting a critical mass of participants from each side of the market. Business leaders must attract the attention of potential users and producers and acquire them as new customers. As platforms mature, business leaders must also focus on retaining a critical mass of participants on both sides to build self-sustaining networks.

Matching producers and consumers of goods. Leaders and platform designers must provide a means of matching producers and users in a timely way that meets their specific needs. They must ensure that there is an optimal level of choice for platform participants as they search for solutions.

Connecting potential buyers and sellers. Platform designers must provide ways for producers and users to connect and exchange additional information and establish the level of trust that is necessary for conducting transactions.

Enabling transactions to take place. Platform designers must also provide a means for exchanging the agreed-upon money, information, or services in a manner that drives value for businesses and maximizes the value of interactions and core transactions between buyers and sellers.

Optimizing their operating and ecosystems. Business leaders and platform designers must work together to fully optimize the core functions of their platforms, including their abilities to match, connect, and enable transactions among their platforms’ participants. They must collect, analyze, and learn from data to enhance participants’ experiences and make continuous enhancements to their platforms.

Many people mistakenly believe that creativity and innovative potential are static, inherent qualities. In Your Creative Mind, Scott Cochrane offers insight into how individuals can master their minds and unlock their creative and innovative potential, all while taking steps to live healthier and more fulfilled lives.

There are five steps that can help people on their journeys to dynamic growth:

1. Be flexible. Stagnation and attachment to business models and market strategies can be fatal. In order to be successful, individuals must be willing to pivot when a shifting market or new technological innovation calls for it.

2. Improve their minds. Creativity can be unlocked by taking steps to ensure that the mind has a proper balance of chemicals and is constantly learning and growing.

3. Maintain positive mindsets. Fearing failure and basing one’s performance on the performance of another are two actions that are destructive to creativity. It is important for people to think in terms of possibilities rather than probabilities, and to focus on positive motivations.

4. Maintain positive relationships. How a relationship is developed determines its trajectory. Business partnerships must be approached with a shared vision of an ideal future that is based on unlocking the potential of all parties involved.

5. Visualize and meditate. Techniques that clear the mind of unnecessary distractions and help to create both inner peace and a heightened focus on objectives are vital tools of a bold mind.

In Yes, And, The Second City executives Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton describe how the fundamentals of great improvisational comedy and can be applied to business. Tapping into their years of experience running the theater troupe responsible for some of today’s biggest comedy superstars, Leonard and Yorton provide leaders with a guide to using improv skills to increase their employees’ engagement and innovation output. In order to master successful improvisation, leaders must enable their employees to say, “Yes, and…” to new ideas and work as ensembles by eliminating their fear of failure.

According to Leonard and Yorton:

Leaders must embrace the fundamentals of great improvisation. By promoting the values of creativity, communication, and collaboration, organizations can improve their employee engagement, innovation output, and customer relations.

As organizations start to improvise more, they must affirm and build upon employees’ ideas. When organizations take the ideas their employees put forward under serious consideration, they embrace the two fundamental words of improvisation: “Yes, and ”

It is vital for organizations to promote their teams to work as ensembles. To work together as effective ensembles, employees must learn how to put their teams’ goals ahead of their own personal glory.

Co-creation is a powerful tool that takes improvisation to the next level. Just as improvisers take creative suggestions from other performers and audience members, organizations can improve their final products by involving their customers in the creative process.

Failure must be viewed as part of the creative process. By acknowledging that failure is not the opposite of success, organizations can produce more cutting-edge innovations.

Everyone in an organization must learn to listen deeply. Leaders can broaden their employees’ perspectives and increase their creative output by teaching them to listen for the sake of truly understanding others–not just responding.

In Creativity at Work, Ros Taylor shares the results of 100 interviews and a formal poll of 1,000 working people in the UK. Taylor sought to discover what happens every day as customers and markets change and how that relates to the role of creativity in a successful workplace. The results uncover myths about the type of people who are creative and help explain how creativity can be used in any work environment. Organizations that want to be viewed as innovative must make room for creative ideas because the two concepts go together. When a business understands the value of creativity at work, it must also recognize that everyone has the capacity to be creative.

Taylor provides the following tips concerning creativity in the workplace:

There are misconceptions about what it means to be creative at work. Many people falsely believe that creativity is something found only in certain professions and is not necessarily available to those in more traditional office roles. On the contrary, creativity can be used and is valuable in any work environment.

People can train their brains to learn new ways to make decisions, and there are different theories about how these processes work. The way one thinks and forms ideas can be changed with practical exercises that are applicable to the workplace.

A culture of creativity is something that can be fostered, even in companies that have not been creative in the past. Companies that view creativity as important can change their cultures as managers lead the way and employees follow.

Creativity is not something that only happens at certain times and to certain types of people. It is something people can learn how to use more frequently, and techniques can help make creativity part of one’s everyday process.

According to author, consultant, and entrepreneur Chris Brogan, there has never been such a promising time for “freaks” to succeed in business. These innovative, independent thinkers are perfectly positioned to take advantage of opportunities that others lack the vision or passion to pursue. At the same time, entrepreneurial success still depends on discipline, structure, and productivity. In The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth, Brogan provides readers with specific guidance for how they can harness the power of out-of-the-box ideas, overcome their fears of failure, and build lives that they love.

According to Brogan:

Today’s business world is far more open than in the past to entrepreneurs who cannot or will not conform to corporate structures and expectations. However, even the most creative and hard-working nonconformists still need clear plans and to understand fundamental business skills.

A freak is someone who does not fit in with conventional businesspeople, dislikes settling or compromise, and seeks ways to make these characteristics an asset. Freaks can make a profit by finding and serving communities made up of like-minded people.

To succeed in business, freaks need to determine not only what makes them unique, but also how to sell to and build relationships with their customers. This involves building discipline, overcoming fear, and learning from experience.

Mastery of certain skills is critical to every business. These include basic legal contract skills, finance skills, marketing skills, and sales skills.

Some freaks can be successful as employeepreneurs, or people who work for companies but do their jobs like entrepreneurs. They take ownership of available resources and find better ways to get things done.

Freaks use media outlets to tell stories that people can relate to and choose to consume. This type of storytelling helps build communities that can then become markets for different products and services.

When things go wrong, making excuses or shifting blame never helps. The most effective way for people to deal with their problems is to define what went wrong, reassess their goals, and take action. If others have been hurt, they must give meaningful apologies.

Most companies think of innovation as being about new technology or developing new products— but the most disruptive organizations of the 21st century have innovated much more than their products or technology. From Ford Motors to Toyota to Uber the automotive industry among many others has been continually disrupted by companies that change the way they “did things,” or their business model.

This WebEx will explore the following questions:

How new business models can be an even more disruptive force than new technology?

Where the biggest business model innovation opportunities lie?

How to create an organization that identifies these game-changing opportunities

Based on Karan Girotra’s co-authored book The Risk-Driven Business Model. Coming Soon to BizSum.com.

In today’s complex, global business landscape, continuous innovation is the key to establishing and maintaining competitive advantage, but it takes more than good ideas to create and win support for meaningful, ongoing change. Madge Meyer explains eight disciplines that are at the heart of effective innovation: Listen, Lead, Position, Promote, Connect, Commit, Execute, and Evolve. In The Innovator’s Path, Meyer provides practical strategies and proven techniques to unlock the power of these disciplines, delivering value to customers while creating a culture that welcomes experimentation and celebrates progress.

Meyer’s eight-discipline framework for facilitating and fueling innovation consists of the following actions:

Listen. There is a major difference between simply hearing customers, coworkers, and other stakeholders, and actually listening to them. Individuals and companies have an advantage when they pay careful, respectful attention to what others have to say.

Lead. A leader need not be a top executive or manager. Leaders at any level can inspire others to top performance with their vision, passion, personal integrity, and high expectations.

Position. Innovation requires a clear vision for the future and a roadmap for achieving it. Developing this future orientation and strategic direction positions the organization to take advantage of new opportunities.

Promote. Innovation leaders can never assume that others know or understand the importance of their work. They must continually communicate their ideas and accomplishments in terms of business value, like augmented savings or revenue.

Connect. Establishing, nurturing, and maintaining a relationship between individuals and among teams is a key responsibility for every innovation leader.

Commit. Individuals, teams, and organizations commit to innovation when they actively encourage new ideas and demonstrate a willingness to take calculated risks.

Evolve. In innovative cultures, individuals and teams are encouraged to continually reexamine solutions. They are challenged to do better — and rewarded accordingly. Ultimately, this approach instills the idea of “innovation-as-usual.”